In the Quiet of Your Room, Everything Is Loud
by element90
Summary: Two distinct moments experienced within the confines of a single space can have a very similar effect.


In the Quiet of Your Room, Everything Is Loud

Oneshot. I'm bored. Here's the product.

The late night hour should be the reason she pauses outside the front door to glance up at his window, and the absence of his parents should be the reason she nervously follows him up the stairs, and the fact that she lied to her mom should be the reason her stomach is twisting in knots and her lip is held tightly between her teeth.

His hand rests on the small of her back, gently ushering her into the dimly-lit bedroom.

"It's so quiet," she whispers unsteadily, almost jumping in surprise at the sound of her own voice, not intentionally meaning to talk, but subconsciously needing to fill the overwhelming silence.

"Yeah..." he says with a small smile as he closes the textbook resting on his desk. "Without Pim being here to drill, saw, or hammer something, it is pretty dead."

"Pim's not here?" she asks, though it's unnecessary. Of course his family's not home, otherwise, Keely wouldn't have dared to visit at this time of the night under the given circumstances and with such intentions as those she carried here like a sack of bricks over her shoulder.

Phil shakes his head while continuing to tidy up his desk area. She can't help but smile at the way he distractedly fidgets with nearly every object on the smooth surface before finally turning to look at her again.

"Uh...did you have any problems getting away?" he asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"No. No problems. I'm...sleeping over at Via's tonight..."

"So... that means...Via knows..."

Keely glances down at her hands. The fingers are bright red from the constant handwringing since she stepped into his bedroom. "Well...I had to tell her something so she'd...kinda know what's going on in case my mom called..." She cautiously meets his eyes again. "Is that okay?" she asks meekly.

"Yeah, yeah, that's fine," he says, trying to reassure her with a smile. "I know Via won't say anything."

"Nah, she won't. We don't have anything to worry about."

He takes a few small steps toward her. "Sounds like we got our bases covered."

"All of those bases...right?"

"You mean..." he says, indicating the general area surrounding his bed with a tilt of his head. She nods. "Covered," he confirms confidently as he closes the distance between them. "Um...do you...do you want to put that somewhere?"

Glancing at the strap of the small duffel across her shoulder, she nods, and mutely drops the weight to the floor. Phil chuckles softly. "That's as good a place as any."

"Sorry," she mumbles in embarrassment, reaching down to retrieve her belongings.

His hand stills her clumsy movements. "It's alright, Keel," he says in a warm voice with the beginnings of his patented grin gracing his lips.

The gentleness in his dark eyes immediately calms her, and she lets the strap slip from her grasp. "I'm just..."

"I know what you mean."

She sighs in frustration. "I just don't know how we go about this."

"Well..." he laughs softly.

"That's not what I meant, Phil," she scolds, unimpressed with his attempt at humor at such an inappropriate time. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she beats him to it. "Sorry," she says, taking a step back. "Maybe I did mean that, too...I think," she finishes quietly, looking down at her shoes.

"It's not like either one of us have much practice," he offers. "So that's perfectly understandable."

She heaves another sigh and begins to slowly pace the floor along the wall. "I just wish I knew what to expect. Ya know? Like what happens after? Do we talk about it? Go to sleep? Should I leave? Take a shower? Should I--"

"Take a shower?" he interrupts in confusion.

"What?" she replies seriously.

Phil grimaces. "Are you saying you might feel...unclean or something?"

Her eyes widen. "No. No, not at all...I mean, I guess not." After an awkward pause, she asks in a small voice, "Do you think that's something we might feel?"

"Like...literally speaking...or...figuratively?"

"Oh," she says, furrowing her brow. "I never even thought of it like that."

"Hey, I got an idea," he speaks with a comforting smile, one that she can respond to the familiarity of. "Let's not think of it period."

Her frown fades as he comes to stand before her looking exactly like the boy he was yesterday, the boy she's always known. "I just don't want to mess this up," she admits, shedding her uneasiness when his hand closes around hers.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," he sincerely reminds her.

"I wanna do this," she counters. "We both do, right?"

He flashes her a bright grin before slowly leaning forward to capture her lips in a breath of a kiss. As her eyelids flutter closed, he whispers into her ear with a faint chuckle, "Keel, you're not breathing."

Realizing he's right, she exhales in one short burst of giggles. "Yeah, that's probably important, huh?"

"I've heard as much," he replies as his hands find her waist.

Sliding her arms around his neck, she nods. "Now _this_ is something I definitely know how to handle."

"And whatever comes next..." he mumbles lazily while focusing his attention on the curve of her neck.

"Is whatever comes next," she concludes, cupping his cheek, encouraging him to lock gazes briefly before their lips meet.

Some moments exist only in a dense fog, a swirl of emotions and thoughts blanketed by an opaqueness occluding the view of what lies underneath. Time flows like sap pours from a tree while reality begins to trickle away, down the mountainside in a tiny rivulet from a light rain shower.

In these moments external sound becomes absent.

But inside, the minutes of life plunge into a deep hollow that sears the soul in a white-hot blaze yet strikes it with an icy blade of steel.

And an internal storm of unprecedented magnitude fiercely rages, piercing through the fog and erupting into a chaotic, ear-splitting symphony of sounds.

Though the caress of love trails across the palm and the late autumn night quietly hums outside the window, the room drowns in a deafening roar of waves from a wild sea...

But that moment passes, and the constant breeze flips through many moments thereafter to alight upon a trembling page marked with fresh ink.

In this moment, shadows creeping in between the rays of summer sunlight cast upon the floor and the walls have grown darker somehow. The smooth surface of the desk is clear of books and papers, only an uncapped pen and broken pencil reside there.

The low rumble in the background ceases, and the cool draft of air seeping through the vent dissipates. Not a single sound reaches the room.

Several seconds have ticked off the clock since they last spoke. The words they strained to speak clearly, only to be stuttered in the end, lay in splintered pieces at their feet. That is where they will leave them for they are too exhausted from the long battle they have waged.

"What happened to us?" Keely wonders out loud while staring blankly into nothing. Her distant, lifeless voice faintly chimes like that of a bell struggling to reach across the land.

Phil sighs, knowing the answer to her question after having spent a great deal of time contemplating it. "We just got lost," he says barely above a whisper, weakly lifting his head to look at her. "And couldn't find our way back."

She blinks and glances in his direction. "It doesn't make any sense. We're supposed to be closer than ever..."

He nods solemnly. "I know."

"I don't want this to be over," she says sadly.

"I don't want that either, Keely," he replies quickly, "but...I don't know what else to do. We can't go back to the way things were before, and we can't seem to more forward without..." He pauses, his face expressing his difficulty in explaining this to her.

"Without things being the way they've been since..." Slowly rising out of the chair and picking at the hem of her shirt, she continues in a sigh, "They became really complicated."

Phil pushes himself off the edge of the bed and pockets his hands. "We haven't been very good at pretending nothing's changed..."

"And we can't start now," she finishes quietly.

"I'm sorry, Keel."

An understanding, shaky smile graces her features for a fraction of a second before she turns away from him. A message board on the wall catches her interest. Small pieces of colored paper with hand-written words are pinned among a scattering of photographs capturing the smiling faces of a girl and a boy.

Stepping closer to the board, she carefully absorbs each item, cute little notes surrounded by hearts, pictures of happy hugs and surprised kisses, all tokens of their time together spanning friendship and love.

"I'm sorry, too," she whispers, her fingertips lightly touching the glossy surface of a forgotten memory of innocence, proof that a time existed when they were the best of friends, when their arms were loosely draped around each other and their hearts had yet to know the taste of bitter sweetness.

Dropping her hand to her side, she breathes out her frustration. The nearly undetectable noise resounds in the absolute silence of the room, but she is unaware for the oppressive sound of regret has filled her mind. She closes her eyes, trying to block it, not wanting to label something so incredibly significant and special to her as a mistake. She doesn't want to wish she could take it back, turn back the clock and stop the moment from entering the pages of her life. But this is her wish, and she feels terrible because of it.

The moment was amazingly beautiful. A cloak of sweet shivers and wishful whispers embraced that night, but the following months harshly stripped it away one thread at a time.

How can she not regret what has ultimately lead to the destruction of everything they shared?

After a few minutes, she turns to face him again. He hasn't moved an inch; he just watches her, his eyes displaying the bottle of emotions within. They reveal a tired sadness and defeat lightened by a shining sliver of desire to keep fighting. She imagines upon looking in the mirror she would see the same reflected in herself.

But it's not enough.

"I... guess I'll leave now."

Phil slowly nods. "Yeah..."

Finality greets everything eventually, and this time, it arrives with announcement, with a rhythmic roll of a drum and the sharp blare of a trumpet. This ending cannot be ignored; the sheer volume alone is enough to launch the senses into a tumultuous cycle.

With nothing left to do but escape the loud pounding, Keely steps out of his quiet room.

And as her stomach twists in knots and she holds her lip tightly between her teeth, she nervously descends the stairs and then pauses outside the front door to briefly glance up at his window.

Then, she walks away.


End file.
